Please go to PJ for this piece of mine about the end of the press’s love affair with Obama.
Did I say “the end?” To paraphrase (and invert) the famous Churchill quote:
Now this is not the end. It is not even the end of the beginning. But it is, perhaps, the beginning of the end.
…which is that Jews are more closely related to other Middle Eastern peoples than they are to the natives of the countries they encountered in their millenia of wanderings, and that they are also very closely related to each other:
The two genome surveys…refute the suggestion made last year by the historian Shlomo Sand in his book “The Invention of the Jewish People” that Jews have no common origin but are a miscellany of people in Europe and Central Asia who converted to Judaism at various times.
Jewish communities from Europe, the Middle East and the Caucasus all have substantial genetic ancestry that traces back to the Levant; Ethiopian Jews and two Judaic communities in India are genetically much closer to their host populations…
[C]alculations show that Iraqi and Iranian Jews separated from other Jewish communities about 2,500 years ago. This genetic finding presumably reflects a historical event, the destruction of the First Temple at Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar in 587 B.C. and the exile of many Jews there to his capital at Babylon.
The shared genetic elements suggest that members of any Jewish community are related to one another as closely as are fourth or fifth cousins in a large population, which is about 10 times higher than the relationship between two people chosen at random off the streets of New York City, Dr. Atzmon said.
Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews have roughly 30 percent European ancestry, with most of the rest from the Middle East, the two surveys find. The two communities seem very similar to each other genetically, which is unexpected because they have been separated for so long.
Fourth or fifth cousins; that seems about right.
Although there’s unquestionably been a lot of genetic mixing, these studies show how relatively stable these populations have been. However, that trend has probably changed dramatically in the last generation or so in this country, as the pace of intermarriage and assimilation has stepped up.
Which reminds me of a classic Jewish joke (when told orally, the way I first heard it, this features a Yiddish accent for the elderly woman):
A man is sitting next to an old lady on an airplane. They begin to chat, and after the preliminaries she cuts to the chase and asks him, “You Jewish?”
“No ma’am, I’m not.”
“Don’t be shy,” she said “You can tell me.”
“No, I’m just not Jewish” he responds.
“You shouldn’t be ashamed of being Jewish,” she says, as she leans closer.
“I’m not,” he answers. “If I were Jewish I’d be proud. But I’m just not Jewish.”
“Maybe your mother, your father, a grandparent, somebody was Jewish?”
“No,” he said, “nobody.”
The lady gets testier and says, “You know, you’re not fooling me. I’m going to keep asking you until you come clean.”
The man decides to give in, just to shut her up. “Okay, if it makes you happy, okay, I’ll say it: yes I’m Jewish.”
“Funny, you don’t look it.”
Whatever else you may think of her, I think the answer has to be “Sarah Palin.” She’s got the experience dealing with the oil companies, and the requisite gumption to do so.
And, if they were being honest, the left would have to give the same answer: Sarah Palin. And that fact must enrage them no end.
Governor Crist of Florida has vetoed legislation that would have made viewing of their sonograms mandatory for women contemplating first-trimester abortions:
Gov. Charlie Crist vetoed a Republican-backed bill that would have required women seeking a first-trimester abortion to pay for an ultrasound exam and, with few exceptions, view the image or have it described to them by their doctor…
“Individuals hold strong personal views on the issue of life, as do I,” Crist wrote. “However, personal views should not result in laws that unwisely expand the role of government and coerce people to obtain medical tests or procedures that are not medically necessary.”
Even if it’s Crist saying it, he’s right.
How is it that Republicans, who are supposed to favor a hands-off attitude towards government intervention in medical treatment, have ended up sponsoring such a profoundly anti-libertarian bill? I know, I know: Republicans are not necessarily libertarians at all.
It is unclear whether first-trimester abortions in Florida already feature ultrasounds in most cases, as they appear to in Oklahoma. A related Oklahoma bill would have required that “the abortion facility…turn the screen at an angle where the mother may view it. She can see it if she wants to look.”
There’s a lot of information out there for women contemplating abortion. There are books and pamphlets with photos of the developing fetus in all stages of development, and Right to Life groups have focused on getting this material out there.
Abortion is a legal medical procedure in this country, albeit a terribly wrenching and controversial one. But doctors, nurses, and ultrasound technicians involved in the abortion process should not be required to follow this agenda of forcing a woman to view her own sonogram; that crosses a certain line that violates their rights and hers, IMHO. What’s next—requiring doctors to show the woman the remains of her aborted fetus?
Just when you think political debate can’t descend any lower, it goes and takes a nosedive.
Case in point: the burning controversy over whether Sarah Palin’s breasts have had some recent enhancement of the surgical variety.
The rumor was fueled by blogs on the left, and is an example of the continuing liberal fascination with various intimate aspects of Sarah Palin’s body. Here’s the montage that launched a thousand speculations. The older photos are on the left and in the middle, and the newest (which purports to be of the rumored recent additions, and was taken at the Belmont racetrack) is on the right:
Now I will go on the record as saying that, although I myself have so far resisted the siren call of cosmetic surgery (much too much of a wimp), I’m not going to be criticizing politicians who go under the knife in order to look better. Joe Biden’s hair transplants and Nancy Pelosi’s botox injections—to name just two obvious examples from perhaps legions of possibilities—move me not.
I think that, especially in the world of harsh public exposure known as politics, it’s understandable to want to look your best, and as you age that becomes more and more difficult. And if Sarah Palin feels that, after mothering five children (or four, if you happen to believe Andrew Sullivan), her chest could use a bit of help, far be it from me to criticize her. .
That said, I think the case for Sarah having had implants is rather weak, although certainly possible. But those who suggest she has done so based merely on the evidence of the photo above in the white shirt are ignoring a couple of basic things about breasts, clothing, and posture—things most women learn some time during adolescence or shortly thereafter.
The first is that much the same can be accomplished by the wearing of a more structured bra than usual, imparting to the chest a bit more oomph.
The second is that shirts with a scooped and gathered neckline such as the one Palin wears in the photo on the right maximize the area in question. To do the opposite—to minimize—one can wear the sort of tailored blouses and suits Palin usually sports.
The third is that slumping ever-so-slightly (as in those photos on the left and in the middle) tends to make a person look less well-endowed, whereas standing up and arching the mid- and especially the upper back—as Sarah happens to be doing in the photo on the right—does exactly the opposite.
So posture can change the look of things quite a bit. In fact, here’s an example for you—another photo of Palin, taken at the racetrack on that very same day in that very same white shirt. In this one, however, Palin is not arching her back. You may note that, had this been the only Palin photo taken that day, the implant rumor would in all likelihood have never gotten off the ground:
Ah, how the mighty have fallen.
With not a hint of self-awareness or irony, Susan Estrich pens a column devoted to the idea that electing the politically inexperienced is dangerous—without acknowledging that, with some mild tweaking, her argument fits President Obama quite nicely.
Now it’s true that he wasn’t technically a newbie to politics. But his political experience was extremely slim on the national level, and what’s far more important is that it completely lacked any managerial or executive component—which at least these Republican businesswomen whom Estrich critiques (such as Fiorina) have in the private sector. It is a puzzlement that Estrich can write the following and not see how perfectly it applies to President Obama; one can only conclude that for various complex reasons, her denial mechanism is working overtime:
Ultimately, this isn’t a game. Ultimately, what matters is not winning but governing. People’s lives depend on it. The nation’s future depends on it. Politics is difficult; governing is hard. Learning lines, winning debates, scoring points against your rival — that’s tough, but not nearly as tough as getting things done once you’re in office.
[NOTE: And Tina Brown proves that the venom and debunking directed by so-called feminist women on the left towards Sarah Palin during and after the 2008 campaign was no fluke or special case. No matter what their accomplishments, women in public life can only get the feminist stamp of approval if they toe the complete party line of the left; otherwise they are imposters.
The same has been long true of prominent and influential African-Americans who happen to be black; if they’re not owned by the left, they’re are no better than Uncle Toms and Aunt Jemimas in the left’s eyes. As Allahpundit writes, “no matter how diverse the GOP becomes, the authenticity card will always be there to discredit its candidates.”
Ironically (boy, I’ve been using that word a lot lately) it fell to George Stephanopoulos to attempt to correct Tina; he must have known she’d put her foot in it. , Here’s the transcript:
TINA BROWN: But, actually, the only trouble with this one is, it almost feels as if all these women winning are kind of a blow to feminism. Because, each one of them, really, most of them, are, you know, very much, uh, uh, you know, against so many of things that women have fought for such a long time.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, you could argue they’re different kinds of feminists. They’ve had a lot of success in different fields.]
…is the gift that keeps on giving.
I could not resist one more video:
>.
[Hat tip: American Digest.]
[NOTE: And (in unrelated news), for now I am keeping away from the Alvin Greene story. I don’t know what to make of it at this point; it is practically surreal.]
That’s been remedied.
[See especially 2:58-4:31, and 7:10 to end]:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Ass Quest 2010 | ||||
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[ADDENDUM: And this is beyond parody. The degree of incompetence in this administration’s handling of the oil spill is quite shocking.]
Jon A. Krosnick is a professor of communication, political science and psychology at Stanford University. As such, he no doubt knows how to spin a story, and he has done a bit of that in an op-ed he wrote that recently appeared in the NY Times, in which he cited a new poll indicating a large majority of Americans still believe in anthropogenic global warming.
It’s not difficult to check out Krosnick’s statements against the poll itself, because the Times has very thoughtfully supplied a link to it.
So, let’s see. Krosnick states:
When respondents were asked if they thought that the earth’s temperature probably had been heating up over the last 100 years, 74 percent answered affirmatively. And 75 percent of respondents said that human behavior was substantially responsible for any warming that has occurred.
Sounds as though belief in AGW is pretty overwhelming and unequivocal. But look at the actual figures, and they seem to suggest something more muted and less clear. For example, after ascertaining in question Q13 that 74% of respondents believe that global warming itself is a reality, the pollsters then asked, in question Q14, “[assuming global warming is happening] do you think a rise in the world’s temperature is being [would be] caused by…” and then gives several possible choices. The answers ran as follows: “things people do” 30%; “natural causes” 25%; “both equally” 45%.
So a roughly equal number of people (30%, 25%) felt that warming was either caused completely by human activities or caused completely by natural forces. Anyone who believed global warming to be some sort of mix was not given a choice of an answer that expressed any possible degree of mixing except “equal.” So anyone who felt there was any possibility of even some slight degree of human-caused warming would be likely to choose that answer as the closest approximation of his/her beliefs. This would tend to overstate the scope and intensity of the belief in AGW.
The rest of the survey offers few surprises. People think industrial pollution should be limited (there are many reasons to favor this that have nothing to do with AGW, by the way). They are not in favor of higher taxes to do this, but are in favor of tax credits. And so on.
The Krosnick piece discusses Climategate and its revelations as follows:
Growing public skepticism has, in recent months, been attributed to news reports about e-mail messages hacked from the computer system at the University of East Anglia in Britain (characterized as showing climate scientists colluding to silence unconvinced colleagues) and by the discoveries of alleged flaws in reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Our new survey discredited this claim in multiple ways. First, we found no decline in Americans’ trust in environmental scientists: 71 percent of respondents said they trust these scientists a moderate amount, a lot or completely, a figure that was 68 percent in 2008 and 70 percent in 2009. Only 9 percent said they knew about the East Anglia e-mail messages and believed they indicated that climate scientists should not be trusted, and only 13 percent of respondents said so about the I.P.C.C. reports’ alleged flaws.
So it seems that not many people in the survey lost faith in climate scientists as a result of the Climategate brouhaha. But Krosnick fails to mention a statistic that especially interested me, which is how many survey respondents had actually heard of Climategate in the first place.
This answer should be no surprise: relatively few, it turns out. If you look at question Q53, about whether respondents remember hearing anything in the news during the past six months about emails sent by climate scientists, 68% do not remember as compared to 32% who do. In the next question, when the 32% who did remember something about it were asked if anything about that story indicated whether climate scientists should be trusted or not, 12% said it indicated nothing about it, 9% said trusted, and 9% said not trusted.
This should be no surprise, either, considering how the MSM virtually ignored (or, if they did cover it, “swiftboated”) the Climategate story. Most people have neither read the story nor heard about it, and of the ones who did I would guess that many of them mostly read reports pooh-poohing it, exonerating the scientists, or even talking about whether the imaginary “hacker” who revealed the emails should be punished.
The situation is very similar (and even a bit worse) when a similar set of questions was asked about the mistakes made by the IPC in issuing its reports (see questions Q54 and Q54b). This time fully 76% had heard nothing of this versus 24% who had heard something. Of those who had somehow managed to ferret out (by hook or by crook) news of the mistakes in the IPC reports, only 4% believe the news indicates they should trust in the IPC reports, 13% believe they should not trust them, and 6% say the news of the errors does not indicate anything either way about whether the reports should be trusted.
It would have been instructive, as well, to have interviewed the people who trust and those who distrust and to have discovered whether their views had changed as a result of reading about Climategate or the IPC mistakes. But even without that information, this survey shows why the MSM is so intent on hiding news it does not like: we can reasonably conclude that coverups still work. Even in this day of alternate news sources, if the MSM doesn’t report something, most people don’t hear about it.
…how the Democratic Party left them.
It’s another “change” story. The money quote:
The reason we feel this way is that we think Obama didn’t just let the Democrats’ mask slip, he yanked it off completely and revealed the true horrors that may have always lurked unbeknownst to us in this party.